


Will-o’-the-Wisp

by queervulcan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Eating Disorders, M/M, Trans Male Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 15:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2656514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queervulcan/pseuds/queervulcan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherry has always been a doll that Mummy dressed up, a doll that Father paraded around to his associates, and a doll that Mycroft could mold into a mini him.</p><p>Sherlock hated it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will-o’-the-Wisp

The first time Sherry Holmes realized she was different was when she was five at the park with her brother, Mycroft, as an early birthday gift. The other little girls her age wanted nothing more than to play on the swings or braid each other’s hair while giggling and crooning songs older than all of them combined.

All Sherry wanted to do was find the dead animals and dissect them one by one, until all their body pieces were categorized and neatly labeled in glass jars that made Mummy positively _shriek_ and made her brother stifle giggles into his sleeves.

Sherry would purposely tear at her frilly dresses and sit in mud spots just to see her Mother grow red and purple, and it took all of her Holmes’ skills to stand at attention with a straight face.

* * *

When Sherry turned six, Mycroft gave her a fat toad and a new scalpel with a note attached saying, ‘Have fun, my dear. Do show me the final results.’

Mother and Father gave her a princess pink dress with frills and lace at the bodice and sleeves. There was a note attached demanding her to wear her matching pink ribbons the next time the family had a social gathering. Each time Sherry thought back on that gift, the memory of that ugly dress made her sneer and want to throw up.

The next time the social parties came around, she ousted a man as cheating on his wife with another woman. Mother had taken away her chemistry sets for a month. Sherry learned to improvise in the kitchen. The scorch marks remained years later.

* * *

On her seventh birthday, Sherry received an anatomy and psychology book from Mycroft. The dry lectures with few photos, interspersed when the text called for diagrams or real evidence. Those books quickly became Sherry’s favorites, the ones she would carry in her school bag and would become dog-eared and covers worn with thumb prints.

Mother and Father gave her a ring from her mother’s dead mother, saying that she would have wanted Sherry to have it, for she was such a beautiful little girl full of brightness. Sherry never knew the lady, and Mycroft would laugh and say, “Good for you,” while patting her head.

* * *

On her eighth birthday, Sherry got into her first fist fight with another boy. They had been calling her and her brother freaks, abominations to what he perceived as ‘normal.’ Mother scolded her for an hour, told her once again that girls should be delicate and perceived as weak so no one could hurt them, then once again took away the nearly professional chemistry set she had gotten from Mycroft at Christmas. Mycroft had laughed, held her in a bone crushing hug, kissed her curly crown of hair, and promptly handed over silver gleaming handcuffs with a parting shot of “Good luck, my dearest.”

* * *

For her ninth birthday, Sherry waited all day for Mycroft to come home and to hold her again like every other year. She waited all day and all night in his bedroom, reading the books he left behind from boarding school from cover to cover, until at dawn she finally dozed off hunched over a philosophy book.

An hour later, she was startled out of her doze by the sound of the door creaking open, and the sunlight washing through the heavy drapes over the wall to wall window.

When she managed to pry her eyelids open through sheer force of will, she had to shut them again quickly as she caught sight of her brother.

Her poor brother, coming home bloody and bruised and with a limp in his right leg.

“Who?” Sherry asked in a whisper.

Mycroft debated lying to protect his little sister or telling the truth and gaining her alliance and risking the pity. In the end, he knew he had to say the truth, for she would figure out in the end.

“Some people don’t take well to queers.” Sherry’s eyes shot open as the words registered, and her keen eyesight and intelligence kicked in before she was fully aware of doing so. Sherry knew Mycroft had always been different, but she never knew how different, not until now.

“This doesn’t change anything.”

Mycroft paused in finding clean clothing within his dresser, his fingers twitching minutely, showing his distress and confusion if you knew what you were looking for.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t. I’m still your Mycroft, and you’re still my Sherry.”

Sherry smiled, falling back onto the bed with a hollow thump. The ceiling had minute spider web crackings and the pink, blue, and purple sunlight that barely drifted past the drapes caused her eyelids to grow heavy with fatigue.

Just as she was dosing off, she whispered, “Promise me you’ll always be there, Mycroft.”

Mycroft pretended not to hear.

* * *

 

For her tenth birthday, Sherry was forced to attend a carnival with her mother and her mother’s associate’s daughters. Sherry sneered at the base girls, flabbergasted at their sheer _stupidity_.

Mother would none too gently elbow her in the ribs, a reminder to act nice and suck up to these rich little girls. Personally, Sherry didn’t see the point. It wasn’t like these girls controlled the money income or even controlled their own trusts. If anything, she would suck up to the mothers, as in most cases they were the ones to control the funds while the husbands did the dirty work of talking and schmoozing.

What Mother didn’t know was that Sherry had snuck out plastic bags with her, stuffing them into her leather satchel bag so if she found a dead animal or insect, she could dissect it later in the woods by their home. Sherry wondered how long it would take to smell in this heat.

At the end of the day, she had two toads, two birds, and one snake she had gotten lucky with.

Her mother was embarrassed, angry, and that had been the first and final time Mother had raised a hand to Sherry.

* * *

 

When she was eleven, she watched as her Mother and Father receded to the background and the train moved on almost sluggishly. The children her age around her wailed and waved soggy handkerchiefs. Sherry smirked and waggled her fingers. Her Mother narrowed her eyes, while her Father’s stern gaze drew into a frown.

Sherry had never felt happier.

* * *

By the time Sherry was twelve, she had read most of the school’s library. The books were mostly about etiquette, school subjects, religion, or philosophy.

Sherry wasn’t interested in any of these unless they had belonged to Mycroft, because she knew she could crack open any of his books and finds notes in the margins in his tight, spidery handwriting.

Sometimes, for the hell of it, there were little notes left behind for Sherry to read on random pages, notes that made her smirk and scoff.

When Sherry turned twelve, she skipped school and went to the library a mile away from the school. The librarians watched her with distrustful eyes, taking in her bedraggled appearance, her baggy clothes, and skin that was pale and stretched over her bones.

Twelve, and Sherry had days where she forgot to eat or even venture outside her dormitory. One of the librarians called up the nerve to confront the little girl, and when questioned on what she was looking for, Sherry took a minute to think it over. Finally, she smiled her oily sweet smile she used on family associates, and answered with all the innocence she could muster, “Gender.”

Gender, the one thing even Mycroft had not let her get close to reading. Oh, there had been vague references to transsexuals, and the human anatomy in her medical textbooks, but nothing so specific, nothing but the hard, dry facts.

An hour later, Sherry left with an armful of books she had checked out, resolved to read them in a week.

It took a few days.

Classes, sleep, and meals had been skipped.

Sherry’s mind was in a whirlwind, processing the new information.

* * *

When Sherry turned thirteen, she was about to take the corner to the convenience store when she heard mutters behind her. Pressing herself against the wall and trying to look inconspicuous by gazing into the shop window with “interest,” she watched as two woman walked by gossiping, shaking their heads about some boy named Carl Powers.

Sherry had no idea what they were talking about, and that irked her. Running to the nearest store, which had happened to be her destination, she searched for that morning’s newspaper.

Carl Powers, young boy, killed in swimming pool. As Sherry read over the article, there was something nagging at her, something she felt the police had been missing.

Later on, she placed a phone call to Mycroft when everyone else was asleep.

They stayed up that night, discussing the details of the case, when near two a.m. and Mycroft’s voice was growing lethargic while Sherry’s voice grew high pitched, she realized what they had been missing.

They had never checked the body for substances. And the boy’s shoes were missing. They had found his belongings, but no shoes. How could Carl Powers have arrived to a swimming pool and allowed entrance with no shoes?

When Sherry brought this up to police, they scoffed, they laughed, and some even went as far as patting her head and telling her to let the professional’s handle this. She knew what they were thinking: _‘Let the males handle this.’_

When she looked at herself in the mirror the next day, she was disgusted by herself.

She found the first pair of scissors, and chopped her shoulder length curls off into an uneven, ugly haircut, where the fringe fell past her forehead, and the sides and back fell past to just below her ear tips.

Sherry thought she looked brilliant, Mother shrieked and cried, demanding an answer as to why, why this? Mycroft’s lips thinned and he walked out of the room without a backwards glance.

* * *

When Sherry was fourteen, she had stayed up to date with all the murder cases. The current DI was a complete buffoon, and she hoped that the soon to be promoted DI, a man named Lestrade, would be better for the job. She had checked his files and background on the school computers, hacking her way past firewalls and covering her tracks.

That Christmas, Mycroft didn’t come home. He didn’t send a gift.

Mother smiled sweetly at Sherry, and told her not to fret.

* * *

 At fifteen, Sherry didn’t want to believe what was wrong with her.

She knew, she just knew, she wasn’t like the other girls in her grade, with the crushes on boys and attending dances, going to parties each week and then denying it the next day, saying they had been home all night studying, quietly, like good little girls.

Sherry didn’t have to lie.

She remembered the case with Carl Powers, the way she had felt after she had looked at herself in the reflection with an ugly bob, but it had been her. Completely herself and not some doll someone had dressed up.

She remembered how the adults around her listened to what the boys had to say, while the girls were pushed aside and told to fetch them another drink, another piece of food, another something.

Sherry turned into Sherlock.

Her schoolwork was signed with S. Holmes.

Letters were addressed as SH.

Sherlock just couldn’t _care_ anymore.

* * *

When Sherlock turned sixteen, he found out why so many people did drugs.

A boy in his chemistry class had offered him a recipe for cocaine in exchange for tutoring. Sherlock was skeptical, but eventually agreed, for lack of anything to do.

At the time, he thought it was one of his best choices.

* * *

When Sherlock turned seventeen, he diagnosed himself as an addict with an eating disorder.

The teachers were all obviously concerned, some with hints of pity. They asked repeatedly if Sherry was okay, and if ‘she’ needed help, to come to them and it would be confidential. Sherlock knew they were all lying.

The students continued to ignore Sherlock like the plague. They did not like anything or anyone that was different; they did not take to sudden change. Even his dorm mates noticed changes; some eyed her with hatred, some with suspicion. Before the first month was out, Sherlock was transferred to his own private room. Sherlock was more than okay with that.

By the time Halloween rolled around, Sherlock was a wisp, pale and gaunt, hidden under layers of T-shirts and ragged blue jeans. His hip bones could be held while standing and his spine curved when he played violin in the hours that everyone was asleep at some strangers home or at another nameless, faceless party.

When someone asked if Sherlock was okay, they only asked once, for they knew better than to ask again lest they be torn to pieces verbally and humiliated further.

Sherlock didn’t go home that Christmas.

Instead, he spent it with a skull he stole from a nearby mortuary, a bag that was homemade, and his violin with its scratches and nail indents.

* * *

When Sherlock was seventeen, he took one look in the mirror after a shower and fell apart.

When he came back to himself, the bathroom was trashed and he had bloody knuckles with small pieces of glass inside.

Sherlock took out the glass, but let the knuckles heal with blood caked over.

* * *

Sherlock’s eighteenth birthday came easier, because now he could apply to university as male, and now he could buy testosterone, and he could move far, far away from his Mother and Father’s influence. Sherlock knew that wherever he went, so did Mycroft, without fail.

In celebration, Sherlock bought himself binders and scheduled an appointment to get access to his testosterone. In the meantime, he kept smoking and dabbled in the occasional cocaine.

* * *

When Sherlock turned nineteen, his dorm mate kicked him out under the pretense of not being able to sleep and his drug use.

Sherlock knew it was because he finally put the pieces together of him being so different.

He decided to move into a flat nearby the university, a small one bedroom with a connecting kitchenette and even smaller bathroom. The room was dirty, and rundown, but it was his, and here he didn’t have to hide, here he could be a man one day and the next he could be the vulnerable Sherlock, the one caught up in his past and choking on lace, choking on needles, swaddled in duvets.

He could do himself up to calm the monsters, to calm the rush in his ears, the panic that washes in like a tsunami, until it’s just in the horizon, waiting, always waiting, for the next time he’s caught off guard. And when the panic recedes, he cleans himself up, and goes back to being Sherlock, back to being a free-floating adult.

* * *

On Sherlock’s twentieth birthday, he looks like a skeleton in the mortuary near the university. He hasn’t attended classes in over a month, and he is sure they are holding a collective breathe, waiting for him to quit, when Victor Trevor shows up at his doorstep, begging, begging, begging on his knees for Sherlock’s assistance.

When Sherlock asks what he gets in return, Trevor pushes Sherlock further inside and pulls his trousers down, all while on his knees. Sherlock can’t find the heart to stop him, merely leans over and closes the door with his fingertips.

A murder case, Sherlock thinks with perverse glee, his first one. And a newly instated Detective, the man from years back named Lestrade. Sherlock thinks he’s awfully nice to be patient enough to put up with Sherlock’s bullshit and his sharp edged insults. Everyone on his squad growls and shoots daggers at Sherlock, while Lestrade just smiles and orders everyone out of the room, with a parting shoot of, “Don’t let me regret this.”

The case is resolved before the sun goes down, and Lestrade has offered him the chance to come back whenever he needs help or whenever Sherlock gets bored.

Sherlock is grateful, and Lestrade knows this, for he clasps Sherlock’s arm, squeezes once, gently, and walks back to his force.

Lestrade can’t help but feel protective of the kid, taking one look and seeing what everyone else misses in him: a fragile, scared, child, trying so, so hard to navigate Britain and the rest of society, alone and with the only companion being needles and a skull.

In celebration, Sherlock goes home, ready to face his family, only to be faced with wild accusations and flung plates that shatter against the cream walls, much like Sherlock inside.

Mycroft had been home from his cozy job, and he stands behind his parent’s wrath, watching with thin lips and disappointed, disapproving eyes. Somehow, that is much worse than the yelling.

Later that night, Mycroft text’s him to tell him to withdraw money from his trust before Mother and Father close the account down, thus transferring the funds back to themselves. Sherlock takes just enough to pay the next few months’ rent and have enough left over to get his surgery.

That summer, he schedules for top surgery, and he spends the time waiting in a daze between shots of testosterone being stabbed in his thigh, and shots of cocaine being shot through his forearms.

* * *

On Sherlock’s twenty-first birthday, his brother shows up to his front door demanding an explanation.

When Sherlock pulls himself out of the empty kitchenette, he looks his brother in the eye.

Sherlock is hard pressed to stop the sneer threatening to come out when he sees his brother in those ugly fancy suits, with the ugly matching umbrella, and five pounds gained to boot. He barely stops himself because Mycroft is being sincere; he truly wants to know what is going on in Sherlock’s brain. They had fallen out over the years when Mycroft went to make his mark on the world, and Sherlock went on to becoming a wasteland.

Sherlock took a deep breathe, and started letting Mycroft know his demons.

“When you look in the mirror, what do you see?”

Mycroft looked confused, but answered nonetheless, “A successful man trying to keep his brother alive.”

And the term brother comes so easily, they are both shocked at how easy it came, until Sherlock’s lips curl into a small smile, and he pats the chair in invitation, while moving back to the kitchen to make tea, all the while answering Mycroft’s unspoken questions.

“You see yourself. When I look in the mirror, I see a monster of a little girl. I see a man, trapped in the body of some ugly girl. When I look in the mirror, I feel the renewal to kill myself.”

Sherlock had to stop because Mycroft gave a choked off sound, somewhere between a sob and a cough. When Sherlock tilts his head back, Mycroft’s knuckles are white with the force to clench against the table top, his eyes are wide as saucers, and there is an expression of desperation, misery, and horror on his face.

Sherlock watches as Mycroft takes multiple, deep, shaky breathes to get himself back under control. He feels detached, weighed down after admitting this.

“Please, let me rent you a new flat. Something bigger than this. Please, Sherlock, let me be your big brother this one time. Let me pay the first month, and you can do the next ones.”

Sherlock considers his options, and gives a cautious nod, “In exchange for?”

Mycroft exhales a shaky breath he had been holding in, and his shoulders visibly droop in relief, “Stop using cocaine.”

Sherlock scoffs, because surely that can’t be it?

Mycroft smiles, seeing his brother’s doubt, “Yes, Sherlock, that’s it. Please, be happy for once, I know you were never happy as a child, I watched you growing up, I saw you look at yourself when no one else was. Gain a few pounds, get off the drugs, and go to Lestrade and work.”

Sherlock is out of his flat and into the next one before the week is up.

* * *

When Sherlock is twenty nine and counting, he is standing on his balcony of the flat Mycroft had gotten him for a deal years ago. Sherlock would get a discount on his flat if he could help the flat’s runner get his wife off a murder charge. Sherlock was able to make sure she wasn’t sentenced to death, but she still served time in jail. The husband figured it was better than nothing.

Now, he waits for Stamford to come back from work, so they can go back to the hospital and fool around with the brand new phials and chemicals.

* * *

When Sherlock is twenty nine, he is at the hospital labs, hunched over a chemical, when the door opens.

* * *

When Sherlock is twenty nine, he meets a man named John Watson.

* * *

When Sherlock is thirty, John Watson smiles up at him, curls a hand over his arm, and tells him he doesn’t care that Sherlock was born Sherry, that Sherlock is this man here, this man now, even the man of the past, that Sherlock is arrogant, rude, and fast paced, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is unrepentantly himself, and absolutely brilliant.

* * *

Sherlock is thirty one when he feels his demons dying down.


End file.
